The Long Song

by Andrea Levy

  ‘How in heaven’s name would I know?’ came his reply.

  ‘But she’s adorable. Do not you think so, John?’ Caroline said before adding, ‘What did you say she was called?’

  Commanding Kitty with a nod of his head to answer his sister’s question, John Howarth let go the horse’s rein and got down from the gig. When Kitty said nothing, he shouted, ‘Tell your mistress the name of the child.’

  And Kitty spoke in a whisper, ‘July.’

  Not hearing Kitty’s reply, Caroline asked once more, ‘What’s her name?’ at which John Howarth snapped impatiently upon his sister, ‘July, Caroline. She said July. Like the month!’

  ‘But July is not a suitable name,’ Caroline said, while her brother asked of Kitty, ‘What are you called?’

  Her reply, spoken softly to his feet, gave him reason to laugh. ‘Kitty. I thought so. Yes . . . yes, I remember now,’ he said, before calling his sister to him, ‘Caroline, come here, I have something amusing for you.’

  When Caroline joined John where he stood, she found herself forced to look up at the slave Kitty. For Kitty was tall and none but the stoutest ever looked upon her in the eye. Come, not even the massa had that licence. After staring upon Kitty—into the deep nostrils of her broad, flat nose, around her thick lips and past her sturdy ample shoulders—Caroline leaned toward the ear of her brother to whisper, ‘Is it a woman?’

  ‘It is indeed,’ he laughed.

  ‘And the mother of this child?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  Caroline wondered how any man under God’s sky would want to lie with such a loathsome creature. And how a beast so ugly that she blocked out all sunlight before her, could mother such an adorable child?

  Her brother was still speaking, waving his arm upon his slave so Caroline might best take in the full summit of Kitty. ‘The amusing thing about this one is that when she was first purchased she was called Little Kitty. She was bought here as a baby from the Campbells at Nutfield. I got her cheap because she was not expected to live. Guy Campbell thought himself very sharp to have sold me such a rum deal. Little Kitty. And now look at her,’ he laughed. ‘Let me assure you, Caroline, that your brother is the best planter in the whole of the Caribbean.’

  As Caroline stood listening to her brother blowing upon a horn that was surely his own, July, stepping to stand by her side, placed her young hand within this white woman’s palm. On feeling this touch from a negro Caroline snatched her hand away. But then, looking down, she saw July’s sweet face turned up to her; her eyes wide and watery. Caroline, relenting, squeezed July’s little fingers. Kitty began to shift her eye from her massa’s feet, where they had rested through this whole encounter, on to her child. She watched as July held up the dainty posy of flowers to the white woman as she had before held them up to her mama.

  ‘You see,’ John Howarth carried on, ‘It was a gamble. It’s not like with a dog—they aren’t born with big paws that can give an indication as to their eventual size. So, in truth, I was not only astute, but lucky too. It’s a good thing Guy Campbell is back in Perthshire because if he saw her now he’d have to chew on his own hat.’

  Kitty took a step so she might wrest July’s hand away from Caroline. But John Howarth shouted on her, ‘Stay!’ Then, flicking his hand at her, he said, ‘Show your mistress your legs.’

  Kitty did not move.

  ‘Lift up your skirt and show her your legs.’ When Kitty still did not take heed of his command he huffed, ‘Oh, good God,’ before grabbing the worn cloth of Kitty’s skirt and raising it almost to her waist. Kitty turned her head to one side as John Howarth beckoned his sister. He commenced rubbing his hand up and down Kitty’s leg saying, ‘Come and feel the muscles.’

  Caroline gaped once more, for Kitty’s legs were so dark and stout, like the trunk of a tree they looked to have grown through the solid earth.

  ‘Come on, Caroline, I have her, she won’t bite. Come and feel their strength.’ Caroline, with July still holding her, stepped forward to run skittering fingers along Kitty’s calf. But Kitty only turned to look at the touch when she felt July’s small hand do the same. ‘It’s the work on the cane pieces, they are absolutely made for it. This one will be in the first gang—cutting cane, holing, manuring, tasks that take a bit of strength. Although with a child . . . nursing mothers usually labour with the weaklings in the second gang. It’s lighter work—feeding the mill, picking up trash from the ground, that sort of thing.’

  As Caroline straightened up she asked, ‘And does this little girl work?’

  ‘Weeding,’ he replied, ‘bringing water to the field slaves with the third gang. Nothing much. For children it’s more like a game. But this one,’ John said whilst slapping Kitty’s thighs, ‘just look at her. The overseer, Dewar, says that when negro women bend over in the field their breasts droop and dangle so much they look to be a beast with six limbs.’

  John began to laugh until his sister said, ‘Oh, please do not be so vulgar.’

  ‘Can you imagine putting silk stockings over these, Caroline. Some in England would say it should be done,’ he said.

  Kitty drew away from his touch, but he pulled her back to stand where he had placed her. He let the fabric of her skirt drop, still smiling with the mirth of it all. As John Howarth climbed back into the gig to recommence their journey, he flicked his hand at Kitty saying, ‘Go on, you can go now.’ But Kitty did not move, for she could see that her child, July, was still captured in the thrall of Mrs Caroline Mortimer; her hand still grasped her, her eyes still fixed upon her.

  ‘Go on, off with you,’ John Howarth said once more.

  Kitty called to July, beckoning her with an urgency that cracked in her throat. But her child paid no heed, too busy was she with her new playmate. She skipped at Caroline’s feet, sprinkling the picked flowers upon the floor before her.

  ‘Oh, she’s adorable,’ Caroline said again.

  Her brother, impatient to finish the journey around the estate, called out to Caroline, ‘Well, bring her then.’

  Kitty turned to face her master.

  ‘Come along, Caroline. Hurry. We need to get out of the sun.’

  ‘Can I take her?’ she asked.

  Kitty tried to seize air enough to breathe.

  ‘Yes, if she’ll amuse you. She would be taken soon enough anyway. It will encourage her to have another. They are dreadful mothers, these negroes.’

  ‘She’ll be my companion here,’ Caroline said. ‘I could train her for the house, or to be my lady’s maid.’

  ‘Well, you could try,’ her brother said. ‘But hurry—this heat is getting fierce.’

  Kitty stepped to snatch July from Caroline’s grasp. But Caroline slapped at Kitty’s hands shouting, ‘What’s she doing?’

  John Howarth raised his whip at Kitty, his face fiercely showing his intent, ‘Be on your way,’ he said, ‘leave the child to your mistress.’

  Kitty, letting go of her child, just said, ‘But she go Unity Pen, massa. We have pass.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ John Howarth shouted, ‘Your mistress here will take her now. She will be up at the big house. Now, go about your business.’

  Caroline struggled to get into the carriage for she had July tight in her grasp and the child still carried the stench of negroes; it was hard to lift the child whilst averting her nose from her pungency. As she settled them both upon the seat of the gig, Caroline asked her brother, ‘Don’t you think Agnes will think she’s adorable?’

  And he replied, ‘Little niggers no longer make my wife smile,’ as the gig rode briskly away from Kitty.

  CHAPTER 5

  READER, COME WITH ME to peer through a window of the great house. But let me place you upon the inside of this fine dwelling, in a room caressed by a cooling night breeze. Rest there upon a chair cushioned in silken fabric smooth to your touch, within the shadowy gleam of several of the finest beeswax candles that perfume the air with a sweet scent.

  Idle awhile. Muse, if you
will, on whether to begin a game of solitaire upon the open card table. Or perhaps you may desire a refreshing drink. Yawn wide and stretch, for it is late into the evening. Do as you would. All I ask is that when this waste-wiling is done, you turn your head once more to that window.

  Do not worry yourself with the openings of slatted wood which allow the breeze to carry in the raucous rattle of croaking night creatures. Nor that high-arched window on the farthest wall which, during the day, gives you a clear view over the lawn to the horizon, but at night shines so black that your reflection is caught as clear as if in a mirror. No, only concern yourself with the small window. See how the leaves of the plant life crowd out any view but that of the dense foliage that is piled and pushed up against it. With a quick glance some of the palms can appear like fingers pressing against the glass. Come, look closer still, for amongst that unruly undergrowth, if you search with a careful eye, you will see that there are indeed fleshy fingers splaying there. The fingers of Kitty’s right hand as she leans against the window in anguish to glimpse her only child, July, there within.

  ‘No look so downcast, for your pickney will do her pee-pee ’pon a throne,’ Miss Rose trilled to Kitty when she had returned to her hut without July. ‘In the great house them have chair made of fine wood and them sit ’pon it—straight back and all—and them let them doings drop. And it tinkle like rain ’pon a calabash as it splash into a bowl. And when all is done them close a wooden lid ’pon the waste—so there be no odour to foul up them day. Them be so fine up in the great house. It be where Miss July belong. She knows she be overseer Dewar’s pickney but never does him even look ’pon her. But in the great house she will at last feel to be a white man’s child. Come sit ’pon this bowl to pee-pee, them will tell her. Is merriment you mus’ be feel. Miss July at the great house! Come, she will get shoe!’

  Yet every night Kitty would creep along the rutted path, sneak through the cultured garden, scale a low stone wall to crawl through that matted vegetation. At that glass she would strain to keep her leaf shape and not be revealed as an ugly negro field slave who was so out of her place that the cat-o’-nine-tails would surely be sent for if she were caught. And there she would wait—staring in upon a room so sublime that she dared not take a breath for fear the air would prove too noble for her.

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 6

  I BELIEVED MY HAND to be improving. ‘Too crabbed, Mama, you must take more care,’ was the complaint from my son, Thomas. ‘Look at the stains of ink upon your fingers. See then how your soiled hand prints smudges all across the paper.’

  ‘It is the pen that drips so,’ I informed him.

  ‘It is not the fault of the pen that you place too much ink upon its nib,’ said he.

  ‘Do you resent me the ink?’ I asked him.

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Then is it the quantity of paper I might use that is vexing you?’

  ‘Nothing is vexing me, Mama. I am just cautioning you to take a little care and tap the nib of the pen upon the inkstand to shake off the excess that might otherwise drip across the paper.’

  ‘But this dripping and staining is not my offence—this ink be inferior,’ I told him.

  ‘There is nothing wrong with the ink,’ he answered back to me.

  ‘Then why it drip so?’

  ‘Because you must tap the pen nib to shake off the ink before you put it to the paper.’

  And so this argument went around. Reader, I am not a woman to stay within a household when all welcome is gone. I stood up from my desk and departed the room. Taking up my valise I placed within it only those few possessions that I first brought into this house those many years before—my square of lace and my blue and white plate. I would take nothing away with me that was given by my son. No feathered Sunday hat nor new Common Sense Oxford shoe, not even a spool of embroidery silk would he find about me.

  Thomas, seeing me firm in my resolve to leave his house, at once began calling for Lillian. Always when he has wronged me, he calls for Lillian. All his battles his wife must fight for him, like she be his mama and he her pickney.

  She entered in upon my room like a howling wind to grab the valise from my hand. How we struggled there we two! I am an old, old woman and she has not more than forty years, yet still she fought me like a fever. It was fear of cracking my plate further that made me stop.

  ‘Miss July, please put down the bag,’ said she. ‘This is your son’s home and you are welcome here. And you know this. Thomas meant no ill by you.’

  Now, reader, although I have suffered hardships much greater than wrestling with Lillian—who would, let me assure you, have been no match for me if our ages had been equal—still I ache. All of my bones have voice to speak to me. Even the smallest of them chats the language of pain. But I bear it as best an old woman can. Yet that quarrel sent me to my bed with a head sore as an aching heart. Even my son’s apology just throbbed at my ear. I believed my deliverance had come; that my maker, be him deity or devil, desired to hear my tale not written as some fool-fool book but spoken close into his ear.

  But a little callaloo soup and a few mouthfuls of stewed goat, saw me much improved. Now, back at my desk, I am fitter than when I was taken.

  As I write, I can see that if I tap the nib of this new pen—a fine instrument with an ebony holder which my son sent away for from Montgomery Ward in America—against the side of the inkstand that contains the new bottle of glossy-black ink, then no drip occurs across the page. Come, it makes it much easier to read.

  ‘Marguerite, Marguerite!’ That is Caroline Mortimer calling out for July. She had resolved to call her slave Marguerite, for she liked the way the name tripped upon her tongue like a trill. Yet it was only Caroline Mortimer who did look upon July’s face to see a Marguerite residing there. And so we must return to my tale.

  Caroline Mortimer was reclining upon her daybed too limp from the midday heat to raise her hand to ring the bell. ‘Marguerite,’ she screeched once more, before collapsing with the effort that such bellowing demanded. Reader, many years have passed within my tale and it was now eight, maybe nine, years that Caroline has been living at the great house of the plantation named Amity. Nowadays, the heat from that Jamaican sun made Caroline floppy as a kitten from sun-up to sundown. She no longer had spirit to fight its languid thrall. A little light embroidery or the arranging of a vase of flowers were just too much toil for her.

  She lay upon her daybed, wishing that the long window—with its clear view over the lawn to the horizon—was carrying into the room a cooling breeze and not, what she could always hear, the tiresome commotion of negroes. The rhythmic drone of the field slaves’ work songs, a mule braying, the pounding of walking feet, the crack of a lash, the gallop of a horse, a piercing yell, the squealing of a slow moving cart. And, so close about her that it was like a nagging worry within her own head, the clatter and jabber as the indolent house slaves went about . . . well what did they go about? ‘Marguerite,’ she yelled once more.

  In the kitchen, the headman, Godfrey, aroused from his nap, licked his top lip to moisten his dry mouth, before gently kicking his foot toward July and saying, ‘Missus calling you.’

  July, looking up from her sewing replied, ‘Soon come, me busy.’

  When the calling came again, sharp enough for the cook, Hannah, to say ‘Cha,’ from her drowsy sleep, Godfrey leaned forward upon his chair to inspect what July was doing.

  ‘What you have there?’

  ‘Missus’s dress. She want it,’ said July.

  ‘Then go give it.’ said Godfrey.

  ‘Me can’t, it not ready—it still have three button on.’

  The kitchen, like in all great houses upon the island, was a large, dark hut with a wide chimney and wooden jalousies upon the open windows, that was set apart a short distance behind the main house. It took three long strides for Godfrey to go from the kitchen to the house, for he was a tall man with long legs. It was six steps for the less gangli
ng July and the two other chamber girls, Molly and Patience. It was a long, long wearisome trudge for the cook, Hannah. Being summoned into the house to listen upon the list of foodstuffs those big-bellies wished to chew on was her torment. At the great age of sixty Hannah resented all motion but that of round and round her kitchen. But for any white missus, like Caroline Mortimer, the reverse of that journey which would see her taken from the house to the kitchen was a voyage of the most substantial distance—like the moon be from the earth.

  ‘Miss July, you can take off that lace for me?’ Molly asked. ‘That will look pretty ’pon me dress.’ She had turned from the window where she was staring out with her good eye, watching four chickens pecking at the dusty ground.

  ‘Missus will see it gone from the bodice,’ July said.

  Molly sucked her teeth. She did not care for July. I could say that it was because July had robbed Molly of easy work; for July had gone from being a filthy nigger child—used only to working in the fields—into the missus’s favoured lady’s maid, who boasted her papa to be a white man even though it was Molly that had the higher colour. And, at sixteen years, July had grown into an excitable young woman with crafty black eyes, a skinny nose, and narrow lips that often bore a smile of insolence; a troublesome dusky-skinned negro girl whom Nimrod (the once-upon-a-time groom at Amity but now a freeman) was always affecting not to notice, yet talked of all the time. But, in truth, Molly just despised anyone who possessed two good eyes within their head.